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The Fourth Hand
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780345463159
ISBN: 0345463153
Label: Fawcett
Manufacturer: Fawcett
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: April 29, 2003
Publisher: Fawcett
Release Date: April 29, 2003
Studio: Fawcett
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Editorial Review:
Like anything newsworthy, miracles of medicine and technology inevitably make their way out of the headlines and become the stuff of fiction. In recent years readers have been absorbed by media accounts of a transplanted hand, an experiment that ultimately ended in amputation. Medical ethicists reason that a hand, unlike a heart or a liver--essential organs conveniently housed out of sight--is in full view and one of a pair, arguably dispensable. In his 10th novel, however, John Irving undertakes to imagine just such a transplant, which involves a donor, a recipient, a surgeon, a particular Green Bay Packer fan, and the remarkable left hand that brings them together.
Television reporter Patrick Wallingford becomes a story himself when he loses his hand to a caged lion while in India covering a circus. The moment is captured live on film, and Patrick (who wears a "perpetual but dismaying smile--the look of someone who knows he's met you before but can't recall the exact occasion") is henceforth known as the lion guy. Before long, plans are made to equip Patrick with a new hand. Doctor Nicholas M. Zajac, superstar surgeon, indefatigable dog-poop scooper, runner, and part-time father, is poised to perform the operation. But the donor--or rather the widow of the donor--has a few stipulations. Doris Clausen wants to meet the one-handed reporter before the procedure, and insists on visitation rights afterward. Irving weaves these characters and a panoply of others together in a smart, funny, readable narrative. Often farcical, The Fourth Hand is ultimately something more: a tender chronicle of the redemptive power of love. --Victoria Jenkins
The Fourth Hand asks an interesting question: “How can anyone identify a dream of the future?” The answer: “Destiny is not imaginable, except in dreams or to those in love."While reporting a story from India, a New York television journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion; millions of TV viewers witness the accident. In Boston, a renowned hand surgeon awaits the opportunity to perform the nation’s first hand transplant; meanwhile, in the distracting aftermath of an acrimonious divorce, the surgeon is seduced by his housekeeper. A married woman in Wisconsin wants to give the one-handed reporter her husband’s left hand – that is, after her husband dies. But the husband is alive, relatively young, and healthy.This is how John Irving’s tenth novel begins; it seems, at first, to be a comedy, perhaps a satire, almost certainly a sexual farce. Yet, in the end, The Fourth Hand is as realistic and emotionally moving as any of Mr. Irving’s previous novels – including The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Widow for One Year – or his Oscar-winning screenplay of The Cider House Rules.The Fourth Hand is characteristic of John Irving’s seamless storytelling and further explores some of the author’s recurring themes – loss, grief, love as redemption. But this novel also breaks new ground; it offers a penetrating look at the power of second chances and the will to change.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
While reporting a story from India, a New York television journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion; millions of TV viewers witness the accident. What happens next is the subject of Irving's tenth novel, which offers a penetrating look at the power of second chances and the will to change.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Enjoyable read
It's been a long time since I read this book but I remember it as an enjoyable experience, typical Irving. General consensus seems to be that this is Irving's worst effort which is almost a reason in itself to try the book. What is John Irving's worst book like?
Rating:  - Another impressive novel by John Irving
If you look at all the quotes and reviews on the cover and in the first pages of the novel itself, you'll see more words than are in this newsletter. All filled with praise, all accurate, and yet. Part of Irving's greatness is that all that verbiage can't even sum up why he's so damn good. Neither can I. It's sharp, it's clever, it's perceptive, it's literate, and I devoured it like the page turner it is. If you've never read this guy, you are sorely deprived.
Rating: - Not so good, really
Maybe the mistake was to read this book after reading both The World According to Garp (wonderful) and A Widow for One Year (very enjoyable, but with plot charactersitics oddly similar to Garp's). Maybe if this had been the first time I read Irving's novels, and met his truly bizarre characters, I would have enjoyed this book more.
But so it happens that I didn't like much this book, because in it I ONLY found weirdness and, yes, good writing, but not for a good purpose. There isn't ... Read More
Rating:  - Irving comes through
One of John Irving's best endeavors, with an un-Irving like ending. Irving's descriptions are vivid and his storytelling becomes nearly poetic in much of this prose, however - I agree with others that this is an extremely readable encounter with Irving and would be good for first time Irving readers as well as those of us who persevered through thick and thin along the way.
Rating: - Not quite there.
I really like a lot of John Irving's early work like "The world according to Garp" and "The Ciderhouse rules".
Sadly this book is more simirlar to his recent book "Until I find you". Similar in that the characters are not believable and the whole plot centres around a man who is(again not believably) irresistible to women and thus has lots of graphically boring sex.Sadly because it confirms that Irving's best work is long behind him.
Skip this book and read Irving's earlier work.
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